


Told Fortunes

by labasu



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Angstshipping - Freeform, GEE THAT SOUNDS FUN, Gen, Ghosts, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Paranormal, Tendershipping, Thiefshipping, What Was I Thinking?, a relationship formed on unhealthy pining for a dead guy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2013-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-09 11:01:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labasu/pseuds/labasu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They make off like – Ryou doesn’t want to think thieves, because they aren’t nearly as good as the Spirit. They just make off, climbing into a shitty rental and driving fast.<br/>(post-series Ghostbuster Ryou and Professional Asshole Malik)<br/>Ourboyfriendisdeadshipping. Implied tendershipping, thiefshipping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even ship it, I screech into the night.

-

Brightness blinds him but Ryou is used to bad stage production. He’s sure the lighting probably illuminates his off-putting features anyway. That, or it makes his poor Lady of Faith impersonation look even sillier.

“Behold,” he shouts into the lapel microphone. His voice gets fritzed by the speakers. He waves his hand dramatically, a gesture to make up for garbled words. It catches on the card deck, which falls in fluttering swoops.

The crowd is snickering. Ryou feels the lights burn even hotter.

“Uh.”

His hands are shaking. He bends over to pick up the deck, but his turban falls off stage in the process.

The crowd laughs, hard. Someone throws his turban back and it smacks his chest.

He laughs weakly, dusts the turban off and puts it back on.

“Okay. Well. Yeah,” he says. He coughs while he shuffles.

The crowd quiets down a bit. They’re waiting for his next fuck-up, which is fine with Ryou. The lights are too much. He can’t make out the crowd at all, but several minutes should be enough for his partner.

“H-here!” he yells, pulling out a card at random. ”Is um…Headless Knight your card?”

He beams.

By now, the crowd is half-booing, half-jeering. Ryou doesn’t blame them. He knows the real card was Spirit Illusion.

“Oops. Sorry, sir,” he calls out. From the corner of his eye, he sees the next act shaking her head. He laughs inwardly. She looks like a girl he had known in high school, once. She was a dancer and good at it too.

Was she embarrassed? Did she believe he was sincere with this mediocre magic? The dancer was fooled back then too. The Spirit turned tricks as well as Ryou could. Too bad this act required fumbling finesse, otherwise he would have loved to summon some demonic entity onstage, speak fluent freak and sic the unearthly upon this city just to see her faith quake.

Suddenly, the lights cut. The crowd murmurs and Ryou feels his partner tap his shoulder.

Time for the disappearing act, his partner says.

_(Ryou sometimes wonders if Malik ever gets tired of thuggery, but then he says shit like this and Ryou can’t help but grin afterwards, divvy the spoils with hands still shaking with silent laughter.)_

They make off like – Ryou doesn’t want to think thieves, because they aren’t nearly as good as the Spirit. They just make off, climbing into a shitty rental and driving fast.

His partner doesn’t say a word, and neither does he. They’re both beaming, not as bright as stage lights but enough to make their faces hurt.

 

* * *

 

When they get home, Ryou puts the kettle on. They have a few cups of English Breakfast and chai haleeb. Malik insists on grounding up cardamom pods, swearing the store versions never compare to his sister’s brew. Ryou shrugs and throws his Tetley bags in his chipped mug, covetous swallows burning his tongue.

_(Both agree hibiscus blends were best left to the supermarkets. Malik haggles karkade at the local import store. Ryou sometimes wakes up to sweet red water and imagines first-born sons hiding in reeds from biblical wrath. They get caught anyway.)_

Their audience tonight was loaded. Golden jewellery and diamond earrings are immediately Malik’s. Most he seals into brown envelopes, but some are washed and worn. Ryou snorts and Malik smirks. This partner is just as theatrical as his last.

Ryou gingerly opens wallets, sorts the I.D.s from the credit cards. He keeps the photos of loved ones and piles them into a cookie jar. The grinning face on the jar greedily accepts. It hasn’t been empty since Christmas.

When they’re finished, Ryou realizes he’s more incomplete than usual.

“Shit.”

“Hm?”

“Left my deck.”

“And nothing of value was lost.”

Ryou knows his punch hurts because Malik apologizes.

(For a moment, when fist connects with arm, their eyes both widen. Malik sees Bakura for a flickering second in Ryou’s annoyed expression, and Ryou realizes this almost instantly.

Later, Ryou still hasn’t figured out what Malik was apologizing for.)

Ryou peels off his costume afterwards, grumbling about the missing cards being nicked by snot-nosed children keen on bending them. Malik averts his eyes, stares steadfast at some motorcycle gang movie.

 

* * *

 

It’s so terrible Ryou cringes with every bravado-pumping rev of engines, gratuitous scenes where the outlaw bikers redeem themselves with slight kindnesses, and strange addition of church pillaging.

_(His partner always looks away when Ryou’s topless. Ryou tried to build muscle last summer, and had a decent looking stomach for a while. It didn’t matter._

_All the bodybuilding in the world could never emulate how /he/ had stood.)_

The church scene fascinates Malik. He leans in, enraptured by B-movie necrophilia.

“Hells Angels, huh,” he says. He seems to be deep in thought. “American, right?”

“Yeah.” Ryou can’t stand it. Some girl has started wailing, and Ryou can tell something terrible will happen to her soon. She was the pastor’s daughter, and probably expected the church to ward away men like these. Ryou empathised.

“I could take them.”

“What.”

Malik nods. He’s grown bored with the movie, stroking his hair with some homemade dry oil concoction. It looks shiny, not greasy like how Ryou’s hair gets when he holes himself in his room for days, devising new tricks for his offstage profession.

“You could too. Wave your hands and do that freaky shit.”

A bark of a laugh – harsh and short - escapes Ryou’s mouth before he can stop it.

“Malik how would a phony magician even-“

“Don’t define yourself with a façade. You’re a goddamn ghostbuster.”

“Paranormal investigator,” corrects Ryou, but files ghostbuster away. The name change would probably get him more clients. “How would I even persuade them to kindly fuck off? Unless one was possessed, I doubt my chances.”

“You’re scarier than you think,” says Malik. He leans in, abruptly, and Ryou’s breath catches. He’s frozen in place and stays so even when it turns out the phone was ringing and Malik was just leaning to pick it up.

“Ishizu I-“ he stops. He sighs. “Yeah. He’s here.”

Ryou barely stutters out a hello, but soon enough his shellshock fades.

 

* * *

 

By the time the speaker finishes, Ryou’s pacing back and forth frantically.

“Yes? Hold on, let me write down the address, miss. Right. I’ll be there with my assistant tomorrow. Right, that’s fine. See you then.”

Ryou slams down the phone and crows triumphantly. The neighbours bang against the wall, but Ryou’s beyond pretend caring.

Malik shakes his head. “I’m not going. Fuck what happened last time.”

Ryou grins. “Not even if it involves an undead motorcycle gang?”

“…American?”

“Yeah.”

Malik groans into his hands. “Shit. Fine. We can take them.”

* * *

 

_NEXT TIME: “I love you dearly Malik, but if you touch my food I will fuck you up.”_


	2. The Lesser Banishing of Last Week’s Groceries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He tries not to look at mirrors during this. Ryou knows his face is curved in a painful imitation; a dead wrong ringer for a Ring’s wronged dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters will be non-linear sometimes. This case is not the same as the first chapter's.

Ryou holds sabbat the usual way: almost drunk, stoned, and surrounded by candles.

Malik had tried to keep him company before, but the bloody rituals Ryou’s body wore in the witching hour made his legs want to run. Which he did.

* * *

 

_(When he hears Ryou unzipping the plastic bag nestled near his pillow, he leaves.)_

* * *

Ryou recites verses he knows aren’t necessary but keep old bodies satisfied. He pours the redness of goats and the ashes of a letter over his arms, rubs it like witch marinade and calls on dear ones.

 

* * *

 

_(He doesn’t say anything, because Ryou has never needed or received goodbyes. A departure, absence of a person, spoke enough.)_

* * *

He tries not to look at mirrors during this. Ryou knows his face is curved in a painful imitation; a dead wrong ringer for a Ring’s wronged dead.

 

* * *

 

_(Malik tears down the hallway, pushing the restless, snarling urge out from his body through his feet-)_

* * *

The ones he call lend tendrils of power, pulsating yellows through his eyes and sucking the sooted blood in trembling laps. 

 

* * *

 

_(pummeling the pavement, bike pummeling the road.)_

* * *

It’s not enough. Ryou raises his voice, cutting through the buzzing of lesser dear ones. Give me better, he says and calls on longer, unforgiving names.

 

* * *

 

_(He rides for hours, until his tank is almost empty and the engine could scorch a village, burn a man’s family down and resurrect snarling urges.)_

* * *

His vision is swimming in reds now.

They doubt him. They shouldn’t.

Ryou draws sigils, etches some in fleshy parts of unreal body parts.

This is the tricky part. Ryou directs his attention to a third arm. He pictures himself growing up with this arm, green and leafed.

They scream and devour those imaginary appendages of dying vegetation, buying into the tricks of a trade Ryou’s corrupting. He is unsafe and bastardizing magic, but Ryou disregards carefully. He learned defilement from the finest.

He offers them the rest of an imagined body. A bag of milk for a leg is gulped down by unseen forces; leftover pizza for eyes is dissolved into a red cackling mist. Links of sausages liquefy and fall into a swirling portal. An eldritch belch echoes after, then thanks him for the dicking.  

And so it went, until Ryou had emptied the fridge of last week’s groceries.

 

* * *

 

_(Malik stops at run-down convenience store. Orders the usual: terrible karkade and shitty kebabs.)_

* * *

They fall for it. Ryou is told of a way.

Ryou concentrates on the thrumming of a high inside his throat, a name hidden in ectorgasmic terror.

He coaxes it, butters consent with slow breathes. He knows he doesn’t need to frolic and that half of these dramatics aren’t necessary, but certain rites carried sheer will over veils better. The Spirit wouldn’t dignify such souls with attention, but Ryou’s not keen on harsh approaches.  These dear ones know the name of one of his client’s spirits, and Ryou wielded names well.

 

* * *

 

_(He downs tea in a single gulp, polishes off dried meat from blackened sticks.)_

* * *

The name’s scraping his teeth now. He can feel it aching to crawl back and ruin his insides, but Ryou clamps it into place. He takes a candle and runs his fingers across the flame, heating them for their messy task.

The name fills his mind with threats, images of family murdered in unnatural bloody ways.

Ryou wants to laugh at the name. You fool, he thinks to the dear ones. You’ve fallen for my trap.

 

* * *

 

_(Afterwards, Malik hustles at bars for gas money; usually cards because that’s what Domino deals best.)_

* * *

Ryou reaches into his mouth with flame-fucked fingers and pulls the name out. It falls out in a gag reflex, acidic post-morterm vomit burning his mouth, tumbling out with a thousand screaming dead.

The name howls cheater, promises agony but Ryou shakes his head.

I won fairly, he tells the dear ones. You made two mistakes.

Ryou doesn’t need to explain. The absence of winning is enough for dear ones. To ask how would be submitting, acknowledging to mortal conquering.

 

* * *

 

_(“A magician n’er reveals ‘is, uh, secrets,” says Malik drunkenly, after his seventh straight win. He’s kicked out anyway, but not without nicking two bottles of cheap beer from behind the bar.)_

* * *

The name lashes in afterdeath throes, sweeping his candles over and gives itself to him.

“Amane Bakura,” it says as the last flame whisps out.

“Amane Bakura,” repeats Ryou.

 

* * *

 

_(Malik roars past pretend traffic. The streets are empty, and he races his steed with the careless abandon of someone who couldn’t imagine dying in a car accident._

_When he gets back, Ryou’s lying in the middle of the room. His candles are wax puddles and his body’s shaking in slow, mourning sobs.)_

* * *

 

They have the entire day to recover. Ryou doesn’t want to talk and Malik’s nursing a hangover, so they sit together quietly, sipping hibiscus tea and marathoning a magical girl anime. Ryou watches it raptly; absorbing the show like a big-eyed sparkle-blessed girl could really save the world.

Malik gets up to eat around noon. There’s not much in the fridge, except last week’s goat stew.

Before he can touch it, Ryou’s voice cuts in.

"I love you dearly Malik, but if you touch my food I will fuck you up."

Malik’s back stiffens. “Fuck you. I’m starving.”

“Buy your own then.”

“Hell no. Where are the rest of our groceries?”

 Malik hears him inhale sharply.

 “I may have. Banished it. Somehow.”

“You banished our groceries?”

“Ghosts wanted more than a blood offering and a cherished item. So I offered our vegetables and a few slices of pizza. And. Well, everything else. They thought they were ripping me apart, of course.”

Malik wants to laugh, ask what really happened but remembers how he found Ryou.

“Mmhm.”

Malik has stew anyway. He decides there are worse fates than getting fucked up by Ryou. Bakura once-

No, he tells himself. No, no, no don’t even start thinking about him.

He goes back down and sits next to Ryou. They watch until the sun sets.

Then they leave for work, eyes aching and stomachs growling for a good time.


End file.
